Good News York by Growth Mode Content - GNY EP.121 | Syracuse's Artist and Creatives Living Space - The Gear Factory!

Episode Date: November 14, 2025

Exploring The Gear Factory: Syracuse's Creative Haven In this episode, Matt Masur from Good News York takes viewers on an in-depth tour of The Gear Factory in downtown Syracuse, a unique space designed for creative individuals. Rick, the owner, shares the vision behind this versatile facility which includes artist workspaces, musician rehearsal studios, and artist live-work apartments. The Gear Factory fosters a vibrant community where creatives can collaborate and thrive. The episode highlights the building’s historical significance and innovative design while also promoting an upcoming open studio event on December 6th. Learn about the new developments, including the acquisition of the historic Light Shop building, and how The Gear Factory continues to support local artists and entrepreneurs. 00:00 Welcome to The Gear Factory 01:18 Exploring the Living Spaces 01:59 Meet Rick: The Visionary Behind The Gear Factory 02:46 The Gear Factory's Creative Community 06:05 Touring the Historic Gear Factory 08:31 The Light Shop: A Hub of Innovation 14:01 Art Shows and Community Events 23:22 The Fifth Floor: Live-Work Apartments 27:14 Conclusion and Upcoming Events

Instagram teen accounts have built-in protections for who can contact teens and what they see. Learn more about teen accounts at Instagram.com slash teen accounts. It's a gentle cruising. You start to see the village, almost like a painting. Join me, travel expert Darley Newman, and Uneworld Boutique River Cruises L'Ik Balee to learn about river cruising in France. As we have been sailing there for decades, we have been able to create deep connection with the local communities. Local connections make exploring France easy. Tune into the Travels with Darley podcast on IHeart and wherever you listen to podcasts

to hear about river cruising and Unirold's 50th anniversary summer specials. Hey, Syracuse. Are you a creative person who wants to be part of a creative community? Would you like to live and work in the same place surrounded with people just like you? That's what's happening right here at the Gear Factory.

I don't know if you heard about this, but this is one of the most incredible places. for creative folks of all sorts, whether you're musicians, photographers, every kind of medium you can imagine there's a home for right here in the Gear Factory, right in downtown Syracuse, in what will soon be known as the Art District right here in our area. This place has got everything, man. Here is a shared living space. Everybody's got kitchen areas, but so many that you don't have to fight over them. They've got this beautiful, wide open communal living space. There's a gorgeous balcony. There's a dining room table where you can come together with your roommates, if you will, your floormates, and just celebrate things. And there's also a gorgeous room that you have to yourself when it's time for privacy and you want your own aspects.

Let's check that out. So this is one of the actual rooms that you can have here at the Gear Factory. As we talked about, they got this incredible communal space out there. but also sometimes you want your own space, you want your own stuff. You can have a gorgeous room like this. All of them don't necessarily have quite as many windows, but they all have big gorgeous windows. They all have your own full-size refrigerator.

Ain't nobody going to mess with your food. Your dedicated heat and air conditioning, you can control your own temperature in your own room. That, to me, would be a deal breaker if I couldn't control it. It's just, this place is really the most incredible thing. You really should check out the gear factory. if you're looking for a new place to stay. Hey guys, Matt Meager from Good News, York.

I am very excited because we are on site with a good buddy of mine, Rick, here at the Gear Factory. If you don't know what the Gear Factory is, well, you should probably keep watching. We're going to give you a tour. This is one of the most incredible places for creative folks. Anybody, musicians, artists,

I mean, we're going to hear all about it. But first, Rick, thank you for bringing us here. If you could, just introduce yourself. a little bit and just give us a minute or two about what this place is and what's going on here. Thanks, Ben. This place most people know is the Gear Factory. I've had it for about 20 years now. And I've had the Gear Factory for about 20 years now. It's been a long process as far as developing it. But the core idea was how can we kind of create that scenario where artists could be more successful here in Syracuse. rather than somewhere else.

So the building is a combination of artists, work studios, musician rehearsal studios, and artist's live work apartments. So there's regular studios for people to be able to do their work, make messes, things like that that they can't normally do in an apartment. The rehearsal studios, bands need to practice. When you turn on the radio, it doesn't just come from somewhere.

It's actually, you know, that takes time and energy and practice and everything sounds good for us. So musicians are able to practice here 24 hours a day, whenever they want, and be really loud, not have to worry about anybody calling the cops on them. And then for the people that want to live and work in the same area, that's on the fourth and fifth floor. We have that too. And that kind of really covers the, I think the best parts about a creative community

are all the in-between times. It's not when you show up to meeting or show up to this or it's all the in-between times when everybody's guard down as you're just kicking ideas around and talking and hanging out. That's awesome, man. This is a massive... What's your total square footage in this place? 65,000 square feet. 65,000 square feet.

And you said five floors total? Five floors up and one down. Okay, that's right. Wow, wow, this is incredible. We're right... I guess you'd say on the outskirts of downtown, is that fair to say? the description, I don't know, to me it's all downtown Syracuse, but... Yeah, originally it was just outside of downtown.

I'm trying to make that part of downtown. Gotcha. That's been a goal of mine, yes. And there's incredible development all around here, so I think you might be on to something. And if we could, just before we move on, we give a little spoiler alert, you've also recently picked up the historic property store as well, right?

Yeah, 201 South Gettus Street. Historically, that's known as the Leipchop. Recently it's been a hardware store, but in the late 1800s there was this guy Charles Leif. He was a graduate of Cornell, a local inventor, and he bought the place, had more than enough space in need it for himself, so he started running out space to other inventors and creative types. It was basically an informal incubator. And over 360 patents came out of these two little buildings here, everything from pneumatic tires to movie equipment to bicycle gears to transmissions.

Wow. It runs a gamut. A lot of things we still use today. That's incredible. And then are you going to use that space? Is it going to be more for creative folks? Or is it a blank canvas for you at this point? It's going to be a little bit of a mix.

I'm thinking the apartments, some smaller apartments upstairs. I already have a photographer and a, a, clothing designer that moved into one of the units. So it'll be maybe a hybrid version of this and a few other things. Maybe lean a little bit more, like more. Here there's more arts and music and things like that. Maybe over there will lean a little bit more into entrepreneurship and things like that. That's incredible, Rick.

Well, listen, let's explore this place a little bit. What do you say? Yeah, let's go. Yeah, let's go. All right. All right, buddy. If you're here, you go that way, you can see the cut of the floor. Yeah, so basically I could talk about whatever, whenever, and then you could separate the audio and the video and

yeah, you can match it together. Yeah, 100%. Okay. Matt, welcome to the Gear Factory. As you come right in the front entrance here, I'll point out the stairwell. We had to add this for a second means of egress during our bigger renovations, but for that, I'd like to point out the building is the first reinforced concrete building in the city of Syracuse. And there was a time when reinforced concrete

was like the wild, wild west of internet or whatever. But what that really did is that allowed for larger spans between columns. So you had a much larger workspace, wide open workspace. It allowed for the gigantic window openings. So you had tons of natural light, tons of natural ventilation. And the architect was Albert Khan. He was one of the first architects really pushing

factory owners from sweatshops to, hey, you know what, maybe if you have a happier, healthy or your work environment, not only it will be good for you, but it'll be good for your employees too. Wow. So when we cut this stairwell out, I wanted to leave the open raw edge

so you can see the construction of the building, the hollow clay tile, and it's kind of a concrete trust system. And I wanted to leave all that exposed and all the steel work that was done by a local Mac brothers, boiler maker company. I wanted the boiler maker company to build the stairs instead of a stair making company so it looked more raw and industrial. And then to add a little bit about the light shop next door and the relationship between the two buildings, so that

building became known as the light shop, the area became known as the cradle of ideas, the cradle of invention. Basically if you had a problem, you need something, you need something invented or something worked out, you came down to the light shop on South Gettys Street and somebody there would figure it out for you. One of the many good inventions but one of the inventions that really helped them to expand was a they developed a really good bicycle gear system which slid right over into the automobile industry at the same time and that's basically where this building came from the Brownlight Gear Company. They became the largest gear

distributors in the world, making transmissions, transfer cases, things like that. And I would, about the LIP shop, I would also just like to point out where maybe he had something like Thomas Edison where he had groups of inventors working for him and basically his name ended up being the name on all the patents. In this case, for the LIP shop, if you go down through a history of the different businesses, a lot of it was Brown-Lipe Wilkinson, Brown-Lipe-Chapen, Brown-Lipe, Chapen, Brown-Lipe, this, brown like that and you would see a lot of the same people getting shifted around in company organizational like president vice president things like that they were they

weren't they weren't taking ideas for their own they were they were taking on new people and they were helping to develop them and develop their businesses and I always like to point out for all those home runs that people like to get like the microns or the carriers or things like that. This was a situation where the area really fostered its small businesses and entrepreneurs and they ended up very quickly blowing up into the giant companies like the Gear Factory, Franklin Motor Car Company, all those different types of places that we try to try to hook all the time but this way they grew very quickly into those. You guys want water or anything?

Oh, thank you. Yeah, thanks, I'm good. So Matt, you asked what came first to commercial space or the residential space. I got the building in 2005. And what I started out with was the originally the previous company had offices on the first floor in a certain area. So I converted those to art studios and had kind of a hard time getting going that first year was done. that first year was not very fun. Sure.

But then I actually ended up hooking up with and getting to know a lot of more of the artists in the area. We ended up doing our first Our Evolution show in 2006 which helped me rent a ton of the studio spaces.

And then a lot of this a lot of this is a combination of like grassroots, community, and, you know, developing the property with people. And, you know, as far as,

and even as far as like what it is. I have my thoughts on what something should be, but I'll give you an example. Every time somebody wants to talk about art stuff or a building or this, and somebody always has to bring up, build it and they'll come, right? Yeah.

Which is kind of annoying. But I interacted with, and I asked a lot of questions to the people that want to use the space, the end user. Yeah. like the different artists, different musicians, what does the space have to do, what's your right?

Sure. If in an ideal situation, what would that look like, right? Let's start there and see how close we can get to it, right? So when these, when I finally got to the point where I could build out the rehearsal studios, different art studios and the apartment stuff, it wasn't a build and they'll come, it was a build it and they're already here. Yeah. Because they were part of the conversation the whole time.

Wow, that's great. So starting with, starting with, uh, Starting without a lot of anything, it's one of the most valuable things I've ever had as far as learning how to really work with people and understand what their needs are and what a business plan has to look like and how to make those things work together. That's incredible. You've come a long way. That's for sure with all the things that we've seen so far. Rick, you mentioned briefly an art show, and I think that's something that before we let it go, we should talk about for just a minute, because in addition to folks who can rent a place or live here and all these other things, you also really celebrate artists and have all kinds of different events like this, right?

Can you talk about some of those shows? Yeah, over the years, we've had Arvolution shows, which those, we had these big aviation engine crates around and machine gun crates that would basically would stack up and people hang artwork on them for those shows there was no no commissions no door cost no anything and it was just a way really to get a whole community of artists like regional artists all together in one room and basically just through word of mouth invite the public it's a gentle cruising you start to see the village almost like a painting join me travel expert darley newman and Uniworld Boutique River Cruises L'Iq Bali to learn about river cruising in France.

As we have been standing there for decades, we have been able to create deep connection with the local communities. Local connections make exploring France easy. Tune into the Travels with Darley podcast on IHeart and wherever you listen to podcasts to hear about river cruising and Unirworld's 50th anniversary summer specials. I earned my degree online at Arizona State University. I chose to get my degree at ASU because I knew that I'd get a quality education, they were recognized for excellence, and that I would be prepared for the workforce upon graduating. To be associated with ASU, both as a student and alum, it makes me extremely proud, and having experienced the program, I know now that I'm set up for success. Learn more at ASUonline.asu.edu.

It was great. That's awesome. It was less like, for the artist, it's not as much like going to your house for dinner. It's like if you went over to your friend's house and you helped make dinner. Yeah. So everybody basically contributed to those. That's so cool. Then for other shows that we've had on the first floor, a lot of times we've been doing like monthly or bi-monthly art shows.

A little bit of a delay over the last few months. But the big thing that we're doing for the month of December is, The Delavan centered down the street. Harold from Boxcar Press, he owns that building now. And we talk and we work together on a lot of different projects, but we've been trying to really solidify with others this stretch of West Fayette, basically from the Gear Factory, the Delavans is Syracuse's genuine arts district. And that's including Lifear Park.

And what we've been doing for the past several years is a holiday open studios. which we're going to be doing this year on December 6th from 10 in the morning to 5 in the afternoon. There will be some food trucks, a lot of artists with their studios open. Right now I think that number is around 70 artists between the two buildings. I think we're going to have some more. That would be a really good show. I know a lot of times when I do Christmas shopping, we're always trying to buy local, but sometimes that's hard.

In this situation, you can just show up. And not only will you be able to buy something that you see if you like it, but you'll also be able to go in and experience what some artist studios are like and some workshops. It's really cool. It's one thing to see a piece of art on the wall and be like, oh, that looks nice, right? Yeah. But when you can see the amount of work and the time and the detail and the thought and the caring that goes into it,

it definitely means a lot more. Yeah. That's incredible, Rick. So we should just take one moment and mention where are we right now? What section of the gear factory are we in? So this is the second floor of the gear factory. It's kind of like my last holdout. All the other floors have been developed so far.

I've had my office here for a while and it's just the... Clearly you've got some workshop space, you've got some... This is, I could see it. This is your play space and you need that, right? Yeah. For everything that you got going on here. This is such a cool place. Yeah, it's kind of bittersweet.

It's like I love the space all open. Sure. And the way it was kind of originally intended to be, but it's not, you got to pair of the usefulness and that together. So my last hold out, we have kind of a DIY woodworking shop over there, but other people do different projects on this floor too. Like some people are just like setting up to paint or somebody was building a bunch stage theater props and a bunch of things here a couple weeks ago.

They just loaded everything up and out. I've had different graffiti artists do... I was just going to ask you about that. Yeah. So that's not somebody broke into the place. This is artwork that you've encouraged folks to let them practice. Yeah, this is actually, some of this is before pre-windows. Wow.

I'm not, I wouldn't condone like just tagging the building or anything like that, but as far as like different mediums, spray paint, graffiti work is some of the most, it's my favorite thing because to see what somebody can do on such a large, detailed level and so quickly at the same time, it's kind of amazing. Yeah. So it's really special to have these things just kind of hanging out. Yeah, I totally agree. It's really cool. I have to update it, but another thing that we added to our website last year, the year before, was the artist directory. Oh, cool.

So there's really a good way for people to connect from outside the building, inside the building with individual artists. And they can even search between, like, if they want something that does woodworking or clay or painting or whatever. What a great resource. Yeah. That's awesome. Yeah, we're looking for a better way to connect the community with the people inside the building.

Yeah. Cool. Cool, cool, cool. Is this a big loop? Yeah, this is a big loop? Walk around, anything catches your eye. A lot of photographers and a lot of photographers really like the natural light. On this floor, I only went up eight feet high with the walls so you'd have that sunlight.

that sunlight kind of like spill over into the hallways and all around and have this really big open airy kind of feeling. This floor we did several graffiti jams on, so I ended up it was it was there was no rhyme or reason anything on the walls here. So for this one I was just like let's just let's paint over everything as it was originally intended. So I have one floor that was kind of yeah you know how the factory would have been with the gray going up little ways and all the white walls or the ceilings and all that kind of stuff for when it was a factory. Wow. That's awesome. The, so the second floor where we were a little while ago, that's going to be a very similar layout to this, except the walls are going to be floor to ceiling, and that way people have a little bit more privacy.

They can be a little bit messier and louder and dustier and not worry about disturbing the neighbors. All the new heating and cooling systems in the building, those are all air source heat pumps. So they're very energy efficient. All the utilities and Wi-Fi and everything are included with all the studios and the apartments and everything. It's like he knows that people are going to grab that. Want to go to the fifth floor? Sure. So Rick, where are we right now?

So right now we are on the fifth floor of the building. This is where all the live work apartments are. Basically, the thing is, like, you had to be an artist to be here, and the apartments are all on the outside perimeter. The kitchens are set up so that there's basically six kitchen stations in one area. That way you can have, you know, two people or multiple people cooking at the same time, not getting each other's way. Then the everybody has their own refrigerator, so there's no refrigerator drama. And the bathrooms are set up basically like a bed and breakfast. But this big huge open area is kind of a work space, hangout space, like, you know, whatever kind of space.

And then the apartments are basically just like one big studio. And one of the key things I did on this floor is that instead of doing it like a typical apartment, which only would allow for about seven apartments up here, this way to make the rents more affordable, and still get the project done, I broke it up into basically smaller studios. So instead of seven apartments, basically there's 15 studios. That makes it a lot more affordable, and there's a co-living component. So all these people work together and live together, and it allows for a lot more interaction, kicking ideas around.

And hopefully all that in-between time and the good things that come out of that. come out of that. That's incredible. That's incredible. So you said there's 15 units on on each floor? Yeah. Wow. Yep. Yep, everybody's a giant huge window and it's really pretty. Wow. I see we've got a dining room table over here. We've got some beautiful natural light. Yeah, a lot of times I think people cook together and eat together and It really seems like it's designed to foster a really good sense of community. Do you find that that occurs? Yes, yeah, definitely.

It's like I worked really hard with people to figure out that happy meeting between having your own private space where like it really feels like you're by yourself. But also having that common space that's that's, that's, You know, you can just, in your everyday life, you're just kind of like stumbling across other people or you're bored, you'd just kind of come out, and it just, it's really easy. Basically, anywhere that you want to go, you're crossing here, crossing there, so you're going to know all of your neighbors here better in probably a week or two than you would for years living in a lot of places. Yeah, and I've got to imagine that it's likely that these are sort of each other's people, right? It's not necessarily like a random apartment building where you get all kinds of folks with all kinds of professions. These are, for the most part, going to be a lot of really sort of like-minded people, right? Yeah, and that's one of the things that really makes it work.

You could just throw a bunch of people together and it could be a disaster, but there's, whether it's a normal world or in the art community, there's a variety of different types of people, personalities, and all these different things. but the one thing that we have here everybody has in common is that artist component. Yeah. So there's always something that connects people.

Awesome. Awesome. Yeah, it's kind of like food too. It's like even if you, maybe you don't like certain kinds of food, you can at least have an appreciation for what goes into the different things. Yeah. You know? Cool.

I love it, Rick. This is really, really incredible. So, Rick, I got to thank you. We're now back to where we started on the first floor. We've gone through all five, floors, we've seen the balcony, we've seen the live work spaces. I keep saying it, but the Gear Factory really is one of the coolest things in Syracuse. First and foremost, thank you for building this, right? And that's, I don't know if you get enough thanks for that, you know,

what you've done for the community here. And I think it's what you set out to done, which is incredibly honorable, is just to create something incredible and unique. And there's five floors full of people here who I think are very appreciative and more to come. So thank you. for the tour and everything you've done here. And one more time, if you wouldn't mind, tell people about the event coming up and then give folks a website where they can find more. Okay, thank you, Matt, for coming over.

Aside from my place, I really appreciate how you've been highlighting so many local businesses and new businesses in the area. It really helps everybody in the whole community out. Thanks. As far as the event that we have coming up, it's the annual, Christmas Open Studios. It's going to be together with Delphan and the Gear Factory,

same day, same time, December 6th from 10 to 5 p.m. in the afternoon. And it's just going to be open to the general public. There's a cover charge of $5, but all of that is going towards public art and light part park. and then you're just going to wander around and go in and out of people's studios and not just see art but see a lot of how it's made and the stories that go along with it. It's really, it brings art to a whole new level when you can see what goes into. So, yeah, December 6th from 10 to 5 and I hope we see a lot of people there. Awesome. Rick, thank you so much, man.

Website, the Gear Factory, SYR. Is that the right spot? The Gear Factory, SYR.com. Awesome. And you also go to the Gear Factory Facebook page or Delavan and ticket sales are there. Perfect, perfect. And the same places folks can go if they're interested in maybe living or working here, right? Is that the same spots?

Yep, absolutely. The Gear Factory website, my name and email and how you sign up, how you apply is all on there. Awesome. Rick, thank you again for joining us on Good News, York, and we'll see you soon. It's a gentle cruising. You start to see the village, almost like a painting. Join me, travel expert Darley Newman, and Uniworld Boutique River Cruises L'Ik Balee to learn about river cruising in France. As we have been sailing there for decades, we have been able to create deep connection with the local communities.

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